I met Richard Aman two days after Barney killed himself. Mr. Aman called and asked me if I could stop by his office after lunch. I didn’t want to go, but Caleb talked me into going. After meeting Mr. Aman, I was glad I went. The first words he said to me when I walked into his office and closed the door were, “Thank you.” The police had given him a copy of Barney’s suicide note, the content of which, surprisingly, was never publicized. Because of the note and the TV and newspaper headlines, Mr. Aman knew I had spoken with Barney right before his death, and he assumed I knew why Barney shot himself.
“I don’t want to know what my son was hiding,” he said. “I simply want to thank you for trying to help him, and for refusing to take part in dismantling my son’s life.” He motioned for me to sit in a brown leather chair in front of his sprawling cherry oak desk. “I’m forever indebted to you, Mr. Greene.”
“I was only doing what I thought was right,” I responded.
“Well, there aren’t too many people today who feel that way,” Richard said with a warm smile. “I’m glad it was you covering the story.”
I smiled and tried to stop myself from squirming in the chair.
Richard continued. “You’re a good man, Mr. Greene, and I want to show my appreciation by offering you a job since you quit yours.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But, can you give me a little time to think about it?”
“Sure,” he replied. “Take all the time you need.”
I knew Caleb was desperate for me to get a job because he included the letter to Aman Realty. During the past month, we’d only gone out three times. We stopped by Richard Aman’s office. Attended the funeral of a man we hardly knew, and went to the grocery store. So he’s starving for a life outside this house.
Since Caleb took the time to conduct a job search, type a resume and cover letters, go online and pay for postage, and then address all the envelopes, I decided to sign seven of the letters. The other— a cover letter and resume for Aman Realty—ended up in the waste-basket. I appreciated Mr. Aman’s offer, but I didn’t turn away from Barney’s story and quit my job at the newspaper because I needed anyone’s gratitude. I did it because I sympathized with Barney, who I believed was living a tragically flawed life. Barney’s flaw was trying to live in two worlds with intersecting orbits. In one world, Barney was the privileged son of an iconic politician and wealthy businessman. In the other, a private world he created, he was a man desperately trying to appease his kept lover whose husband died four years ago in a suspicious accident the night he found out about their affair. Barney thought ending the relationship before he began his bid for governor was the only way to keep his two worlds apart. He must have been blind not to see the collision ahead.
* * *
Most people die without ever living their own lives because their lives belong to everyone who was part of their world. My life belonged to Caleb.
* * *
I took three sleeping pills, but they didn’t help. I had been lying in bed for three hours dreaming even though I was wide awake. I wished I could reset the hands on the clock and fast forward to sunrise since, most of the time, daylight could chase the dream away with the dark. The dream, which kept repeating itself, was a familiar dream. In the dream, I was standing on the banks of a narrow, winding creek that bordered the back yard of a two-story, red-brick house. It was cold. Freezing cold. And snowing. Even though night was settling in, I could see a thin sheet of ice crystallizing on the surface of the embittered creek. That’s when the dream ended, but only long enough to rewind and begin again.
* * *
A couple of months ago, I asked Caleb did he ever dream.
“That’s a dumb-ass question,” he snapped. “Everybody dreams.”
“What I meant to ask was, in your dreams…?” I hesitated.
“In my dreams…what?”
“Are you outside…or…?”
“…or still trapped inside here?” Caleb finished for me. He turned and looked out the front window. Little Leaguers, and their coaches, parents and fans were getting ready for the regional championship game at Myers Park. A group of young men were playing a game of full-court basketball. The tennis courts were filled. And joggers and hikers appeared and disappeared on the park’s meandering trails. “No,” Caleb answered and pointed out the window at Myers Park. “In my dreams, I’m not trapped inside of this house. I’m out there.”
I’d give anything to dream I was in Myers Park instead of standing on the banks of Flatley Creek in the cold.
* * *
We lived cloistered lives that paled in comparison to the lives of people like Barney Aman. Two months after Barney’s death, his story still made headlines and dominated the evening news. I knew Caleb and I will not be missed when our life ends, but I worried whether anyone would know we ever existed.
CHAPTER 6 CALEB
Nigel told me to pick up a book and read it since I was so obviously bored. “I will as soon as you climb out of the fairytale world you’re wallowing in,” I shot back. Nigel’s eyes immediately became interim ice-picks that he used to stab me twice in the neck. I deserved it though, because I never told Nigel why I let my library card expire or why I no longer had a passion for reading. What he didn’t realize was, when I read and get to know characters in books, sometimes I become overwhelmed by a morose sympathy for these people whose destiny was to live lives, happy or sad, in compassed worlds akin to mine.
* * *
Three different gubernatorial campaign ads aired during the last hour’s commercial breaks. Barney’s death sent the gubernatorial campaign into high gear and the candidates began a soul-killing, but bloodless, battle for Barney’s vacant frontrunner status. As I watched each candidate tout his attributes and point out the flaws of the competitors, I wondered if Barney would still be the frontrunner if he hadn’t killed himself. Would the secret he was running from have surfaced and knocked him out of the top spot and potentially out of the race?
Nigel wouldn’t talk about Barney, and I understood why. Nigel had canonized Barney. In his mind, he’d made Barney into someone heroic, someone inspiring. I guess there’s nothing wrong with that if Barney really was a hero. I never saw Barney as the heroic type. How could he be a hero when he took the coward’s way out? Had he stuck around longer, he may have become a hero because he really was one of the good guys. I surmised that Barney was a man who was too afraid to face his own questions about a night he couldn’t remember. I sympathized with Barney’s struggle because I’d been there too. And, unless you’d been there, you wouldn’t know how hard it was to live in the present when you couldn’t remember the past. It’s like trying to go somewhere but not knowing how to get there because you didn’t know where you started. The difference between us was I didn’t let myself think about that day thirteen years ago. Barney could never move past the night he couldn’t remember. He needed to know what happened on the night Frances Pelt’s husband died under questionable circumstances. Whether or not Barney had anything to do with Terry Pelt’s death, my guess was Richard Aman and his cohorts made any involvement Barney may have had disappear. He was in the clear. So, why couldn’t Barney leave well enough alone?
“Do you think Barney had something to do with Terry Pelt’s death?” I asked Nigel as we watched an ad attacking Clay Walton, who moved to the top of the polls after Barney’s death. Before Nigel could respond, I answered my own question. “I think he did. Why would he kill himself if he didn’t?”
That wasn’t the first time I’d asked Nigel what he thought about Barney’s death. But, unlike the other times, he decided to respond.
“According to the police reports, Terry was cleaning his rifle to go hunting the next day when it accidentally discharged,” he explained.
“Terry was accidentally shot in the head, right?”
“Yes.”
“And Barney deliberately shot himself in the head, right?”
“That’s right,” Nigel responded.
&nbs
p; “Sounds like too much of a coincidence to me.”
“The coroner’s report established that Teddy’s wound was more than likely an accident. And, could it be Barney killed himself because he was scared people would form false conclusions like you have?”
“If I knew I wasn’t guilty of something, I wouldn’t care how many false conclusions people came up with,” I stated my position.
“Well, everyone isn’t you,” Nigel countered. “Some people worry about what others say and think about them. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It simply means…” Nigel’s voice trailed off as he began lecturing me.
I knew Nigel would go on forever about this. He hadn’t talked this much in days, so I pretended I was listening. What I really wanted was for him to shut up, get off his ass, grab the car keys, and dip. He needed to go somewhere, anywhere, so we could get out of this house. Being locked up in this house for the past month and a half was driving me crazy, and it started to show on my face and in my conversations with him. I don’t know why Nigel couldn’t see how aggravated I was. Maybe he did, but pretended he didn’t. But then, all of a sudden, Nigel’s eyes tapered to razor slits and his eyebrows hovered like too taut bows. I figured he’d heard my thoughts. His voice palpitated as he said something I couldn’t decipher. I nodded in congruence, but in my mind I screamed, “Get a life, Nigel!”
He must have heard me again because he stood and looked around the room. He turned off the ceiling fan, then continued looking around the living room for something. I hoped it was the car keys.
“What are you looking for?” I finally asked.
“The remote,” Nigel answered. “I want to see what the weather’s going to be like tomorrow.”
I wanted to wring his neck.
I sat at the computer preparing to write a blog about Barney, when Nigel walked into the living room and saw me. He must have developed mind-reading skills because he looked right at me and said, “Do not write anything about Barney in your blog. Do you hear me, Caleb? Nothing.” I usually get mad when Nigel talks to me like he’s chastising a child because I’m a grown-ass man. I let it pass that time because it was the first time Nigel had ever mentioned the blog. However, he did give me an idea for a memory to write about.
* * *
The (not so true) Way I Remember It – by Caleb Greene
“How Momma Raised Good Children”
I hear it all the time.
Children are “badder” than they used to be.
I’ve heard it from relatives and friends who claim not to know where the children they’re raising come from. I hear it from uncles and aunts, from people whose jobs require them to work with children, and from neighbors who live behind high fences or with bad dogs. And, after listening to them all complain about how bad children have become, they’re caught off guard when I beg to differ.
My initial response to these people who are deliberately trying to give children a bad rap is what they’re saying is an unproven fact. After explaining that an unproven fact is something you know to be true but only because your gut tells you it’s true, I usually lay out my journalism credentials. You see, the first and most important lesson they teach future journalists at Richmond University is a factual error is an automatic failure. So, I learned to take issue with unproven facts.
However, most parents don’t seem to care what they taught me or what I learned in college. I’ve read your comments and I know nothing short of divine intervention will convince most of you that children are not badder than they used to be.
I’m not sure who’s to blame for starting this misconception about today’s children, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason children appear to be badder than we used to be is because nowadays you can’t tell children to “get lost.” Or as my mother and father would command, “Get out of my sight and don’t let me see you until I call for you.”
On weekends, during the summer, or any time school was out, Nigel and I were literally thrown out the house. And some days, when they wanted us to be really good children, they didn’t allow us to hang out in the yard.
By the time one of them walked out on the porch and yelled across three neighborhood blocks, the house would be cleaned, dinner would be cooked, and the only thing left to do was feed, bathe, and put their “good” children to bed.
The encroachment of society’s seedy elements into neighborhoods has made it even more difficult for parents not to raise “bad” children. I’m sure no parent wants to put their children in harm’s way and they shouldn’t. But how can you raise “good” children if you can’t tell them to get lost? Getting lost when told to do so is what made us good children.
Technology is also to blame.
When was the last time you told someone to get lost? And they did? Or could?
Technology won’t allow people to get lost.
Back in the day, when you needed to talk to someone, your options were to call their house or yell across three neighborhood blocks. If they were home, good. If not, you yelled until you were hoarse or you called back every ten minutes until their mother took the phone off the hook and you got a busy signal for the next hour.
Today, if the person you need to speak with isn’t home, you can probably reach them on their cell phone even if they’re somewhere they shouldn’t be talking on the phone, like in church or class. Most of today’s so-called bad children have cell phones, which presents yet another problem. Even if you could tell them to get lost, you wouldn’t have a hard enough time finding them. Just call your bad children’s cell phones and yell, “Get here!”
* * *
After I finished the column, I was glad Nigel had told me not to write about Barney Aman. It was for a spiteful reason though. I wrote about Mom and our childhood, which was going to make him squirm when he read the blog. And he’s going to read it only to make sure I didn’t write about Barney. That’s what he gets for trying to dictate what I write about.
* * *
When I needed to escape from inside these walls, I imagined I was a whale and these walls contained all the world’s oceans. Then every shore, near and far, was within my reach.
* * *
It was Nigel’s idea to go grocery shopping at midnight because, usually, there were only a handful of shoppers in the store at that time of night. He was wrong. There wasn’t even a handful. The store was empty except for the two of us, two cashiers, and an assistant manager.
The three shelves lined with coffee in jars, cans, and bags were also empty as far as I was concerned. I wanted a large bag of Folgers Classic Roast, but the store was completely out of Folgers. Nigel picked up a bag of the store brand and put it in the cart. I took the bag out the cart and put it back on the shelf. Nigel gave me that look he gives me when he thought I was being difficult. Coffee was coffee, he said, and put two bags in the cart.
When we got to the register, Nigel realized he’d left his wallet in the car. He went to the car while the cashier rang up the groceries. The total came to $187.32, which Nigel paid with his debit card. We saved a few dollars because some of the main items on our list were on sale. Eggs were on sale. Two dozen for $1.29. A twelve-pack of Diet Coke was $2.59. And a big box of Little Debbie’s oatmeal pies was $1.09.
On the way home, we made it through seven consecutive stoplights without having to stop. It wasn’t because Nigel was speeding, unless you call driving thirty in a forty-five mile-per-hour zone mashing the gas. I was about to get pissed off with Nigel’s Miss-Daisy-driving-ass because I wanted to make it home before the bottom fell out the clouds. The clouds were so heavy they looked like they had pot bellies that were scuffing the ground. After all that showing off, it ended up not raining a drop.
That was three weeks ago, the last time we left this house. Three weeks. Twenty-something days. And, far too many hours for me to try to calculate.
* * *
The only thing I hated more than my fear was not knowing why I was afraid.
* * *
/> I felt like screaming, I was sick and tired of sitting here staring out this damn window! Instead, I held everything inside and continued staring out the window. I didn’t want to turn around and look at Nigel because looking at him would piss me off. Without looking for him, it was easy to guess he was in front of the television glued to the Weather Channel with that shit-eating grin on his face. When Nigel knew he was wrong and tried to pretend everything was fine, his grin turned inward on him. He sat there, pretending our world was perfect when I was a few seconds away from rearranging his front teeth. It was a good thing he didn’t say anything to me—anything—or even look at me wrong because I was ready to bust him in the mouth.
* * *
Nigel signed seven of the eight cover letters I left on the desk for him. I had a feeling he wasn’t going to sign the letter to Aman Realty. I included the resume and letter to Richard Aman to see if Nigel would prove me wrong for once. But as usual, he didn’t.
The hard part was mailing them. We had a new carrier. Friday was the last day for Vernon, our last carrier, and he didn’t know who was going to replace him on this route until Friday. That’s when he told me that a young black guy name Billy would replace him. Billy worked this route for three days last summer while Vernon was out on medical leave. I didn’t meet him then because we didn’t have any mail those three days, so I had not had a chance to explain our mail delivery routine: I’d retreat to the bedroom, Vernon would open the door, bring the mail inside, and pick up any outgoing mail. After he closed the door and left, I would come out. Friday, Vernon said he would explain the delivery system to Billy. I was glad he did.
Our First Love Page 4